1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to network browser; and, more particularly, to an Internet browser capable of searching historical Internet data.
2. Related Art
In the current information age, millions of web pages containing an amazing variety of topics can be viewed using a network browser over the Internet. Commercially available network browsers can display the HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or XML (Extensible Markup Language) web pages on the computer screen where the web pages contain text and images. The network browser usually contains an address bar wherein a user can type in the required HTML/XML web page or URL address, upon which the web page information is displayed on the browser screen of the client device where IP (Internet protocol) is active. The network browser, with the help of one or more Domain Name Servers (DNS), facilitates the accessing of the web page whose address is keyed in the address bar, and the browser displays the contents of the web page. At present, in addition to this display function, the network browser has provision for storing the history of web pages visited, bookmarking certain web pages, and changing display formats in terms of characters and fonts available. However, while the Internet browser can often track sites visited in the past, there is often no ability for browsing and obtaining old/past/historic information pertaining to an older date, time, or versions of content on the Internet. It is possible to access historical web pages by going through cached or archived sites/links one by one, but the content displayed at that address or location will be the current information and not past information that may have been present at that site. Current browsers do not support an easy and efficient way of viewing this kind of historical Internet data.
For example, a user may want to know the news that existed on certain old date or past time of a news web site. Do accomplish this, the user gets the display of that site by keying in the web address obtained from a search. But if the user were to browse the news for the next date or next edition, there is no simple feature available in the network browser to present that content at present. The user has to manually open the next searched link by observing the result and it is cumbersome. Also the user cannot easily navigate through different timelines of historic information for that particular web page.
These and other limitations and deficiencies associated with the related art may be more fully appreciated by those skilled in the art after comparing such related art with various aspects of the present invention as set forth herein with reference to the figures.